Stanley Johnson won’t be abiding by his son’s advice to stay home during the coronavirus outbreak in the United Kingdom.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned people in England this week to avoid social gatherings, including visits to pubs, to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. His request was scoffed at by many, including his 79-year-old father.
“Of course I’ll go to a pub if I need to go to a pub,” the elder Johnson said in a Tuesday interview on This Morning. “He said you should avoid going to the pubs, but if I had to go to a pub, I’d go to a pub.”
When the hosts questioned why anyone would need to go to a pub during the pandemic, Johnson replied, “Well, because the people who run pubs need a little bit of people, and they don’t want people to be not in a pub at all, that’s my line.”
Prime minister’s dad says he will ignore his own son’s advice and go to the pub pic.twitter.com/khI0eh2BhT
— The Independent (@Independent) March 17, 2020
Stanley Johnson is in the highest-risk age group for contracting a potentially fatal infection. President Trump recently extended his 30-day European travel ban to include the U.K. and Ireland.
As of Tuesday morning, the U.K. had more than 1,900 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 56 deaths related to the illness. Globally, more than 187,000 people have confirmed cases of the coronavirus, while nearly 7,500 have died. More than 80,000 have recovered from their confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December.
